A group in southern Alamance County is pushing to preserve the rural community and keep more heavy industry from setting up shop and is asking county commissioners to consider a new zoning proposal that would help make that happen. The Snow Camp community is filled with agricultural farmland and a rich history. Its Quaker roots go back to the mid-1700s. This rustic part of the Piedmont is also attracting big business. Alamance Aggregates secured a mining permit for a rock quarry. Blasting began last fall.
When Alamance Aggregates got its county permit three years ago, the county’s Heavy Industrial Development Ordinance (HIDO) didn’t even require the county planning board, the commissioners or the county manager to hear about it. But nine months later, neighbors brought it to their attention. That spurred the commissioners to have a moratorium on taking new industrial development applications for the better part of 2019 while the county planning board drew up changes to the HIDO.
Those changes haven’t done anything to stop the quarry. It has been approved to start building its facilities, said County Planning Director Tonya Caddle. County Attorney Clyde Albright said it could be late this year before it starts mining.
Times-News
The county commissioners started working toward a six-month industrial development moratorium in Snow Camp to stop any more unwanted industry before an area zoning plan can be drawn up and take effect.
The Alamance County Board of Commissioners voted 5-0 Monday Feb. 1 to start a small area plan for Snow Camp and schedule a March 1 public hearing required before enacting a moratorium on new industrial development for the area in Alamance County s southwest corner including Sutphin and Pleasant Hill.
A crushed rock quarry approved for more than 300 acres off Clark Road in 2018 outraged neighbors in the area and brought home some facts. Alamance County is in the middle of a lot of industrial and residential development with “megasites,” undeveloped areas set aside for industrial growth, in Person, Randolph, Guilford and Chatham counties. But it is one of the very few counties in the Piedmont without zoning rules to limit unpopular development like rock crushers and asp